


The Day Clint Barton Missed His Target

by SylvanWitch



Series: Proving the Exception [6]
Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: After the Third Bond fic, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 20:27:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/944296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Clint Barton never misses his target.  Until the day that he does.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Day Clint Barton Missed His Target

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place after the consummation of the Third Bond. It's part of my "Proving the Exception" 'verse. You don't have to read that series to understand this story, but it would probably help.

The day Clint Barton missed his target—and okay, he still hit the mark, but he’d intended to kill the guy cleanly, one arrow straight through the heart, and instead, he’d pinned him through the shoulder and had to use another arrow, through the throat, to actually kill him—

That day, Sitwell’s teasing voice—“Didja forget your Wheaties this morning, Barton?”—was almost drowned out by the blood suddenly pounding in his head as his heart-rate spiked and he realized that

“Coulson’s down.”

His voice sounded tinny, distant, but he was sure he’d made himself heard.  Below, over the caterwauling of sirens, people scuttled like scalded ants to clear the street where an apparently ordinary businessman (actually a criminal mastermind in Thailand’s child sex slave market) was shish-kebabed to the side of a ptomaine truck parked at the curb in front of a nondescript office building.

Clint wasn’t really seeing the activity.  He wasn’t registering the uproar he’d caused.  More importantly, he wasn’t packing up his bow and getting the hell out of Dodge.

He was trying to control his breathing and determine exactly how badly Phil had been injured, trying to send him strength and soothing calm—like Phil needed either of those things—trying to make himself understood to Sitwell, who was saying,

“Barton!  Get off the goddamned roof!  Barton!  Barton, do you read?”  
  
“Copy,” he said on automatic, stowing his bow and moving swiftly to the rappelling line he’d secured to the rear wall of the roof.

He didn’t remember sliding down the rope, taking the impact with bent knees as he hit the ground, hustling into the waiting SHIELD van.

He thought he’d said, “Phil’s been shot,” thought he’d seen Sitwell’s confusion and concern, but he didn’t have time for any of that because he could feel Phil’s life ebbing, his strength weakening.  The thread that wove between them was thinning as Phil’s grasp weakened, and Clint closed his eyes and threw everything he had into keeping Phil alive.

Distantly, as if it was happening to some other person, he heard Sitwell on the horn to HQ informing them that something had happened to Coulson.  Dimly, Clint felt the van rock as it trundled over railroad tracks.

The thrumming of chopper blades might’ve been the impulsion of his heart willing Phil’s to keep beating.

“Where is he?” Sitwell might’ve said.  “Where is he, Barton?  Where’s Coulson?”

That didn’t register except as background noise.

Sitwell punched him on his drawing arm, hard, and said, “Where the fuck is Phil, Clint.”

And Clint told him, eyes suddenly full of Phil’s narrow view of the world—an alleyway, the stink of cat urine and rotting food.  A poster on the wall, colors running, with…is it a bull?  A bullfight.  Phil’s hand weakly opening and closing as he reached futilely for his missing gun.  Heat.  A gabble of voices on the busy street beyond the dark…people speaking…

“Castilian,” Clint managed.  “Madrid?”

No.  He felt Phil’s denial, felt him struggling to make words.  Clint didn’t need the broken whisper falling from Phil’s lips; he was inside Phil’s head, standing in the earlier afternoon sunlight as it bathed the terracotta tiles beneath his neatly polished shoes.  In his memory, Phil’s eyes swept the square, and Clint caught the famous profile in the background.

“The Alhambra.  Granada.”

The shoes moved, the perspective shifted, and he caught sight of round, black wrought-iron café tables, a strolling musician on a mandolin, three girls in leotards tumbling and laughing.

A tavern.

A bus stop bench with a faded advertisement for tobacco.

A street sign.

Phil’s sight stuttered and Clint blinked frantically, as if he were the one losing focus.  The lens narrowed, a hard grey band drawing tightly inward. Cold overtook him, and Clint fought against the freezing cement embrace squeezing air out of his lungs.

“Barton!”  Someone was calling his name, but the voice was too far away, too far to help him, help Phil. 

 “Clint!”  Again the voice, fainter still and fading fast.

“Clint,” a whisper, close enough that he felt warm breath brush his ear.  A brush of lips against his temple, a touch at his throat, fond and fleeting.  “Clint,” stronger, with the heat of the sun in it, with rare Sunday mornings in bed together, shared hot showers after a weary day, strong fingers on the back of his neck, the brush of a pinkie finger across his hand as they passed in the hallway. 

Then Clint could breathe again.

Clint came out of his trance gasping, choked on the first desperate lungful pumped into his chest by Sitwell, whose eyes were wide as Clint shoved him back, sat up, gagged, and blinked cough-tears out of his eyes.

“Phil?” he rasped, terrified, scrabbling at the empty place in his consciousness where Phil always abided.  

“He’s okay.  Unconscious but stable.  They said he should’ve bled out, but he was still aware when they found him, and they stopped the bleeding and set up a field transfusion.  They’re moving him by chopper to a SHIELD facility now.”

Unable to believe what he was hearing, Clint probed the Bond, convinced he’d find it shredded, all of their love and strength dissipated like atoms in a great, black void.  Instead, he found a blockage, like a clamp over a spurting artery, and he realized all at once that Phil must have blocked the Bond so that Clint wouldn’t give his life for Phil, so that Clint would live even if Phil died.

Anger warred with relief, exhaustion eventually winning out over both as he slumped back against the vibrating wall of a chopper he didn’t remember getting onto. 

“What happened?”  His voice was rough, like he’d been shouting for hours to be heard over the roaring of the chopper’s rotors overhead.

“You stopped breathing,” Sitwell said.  “It was the freakiest thing, man.”  Sitwell punched him again in his drawing arm, and Clint felt it, the sharp immediate pain that diminished to a dull throbbing in time with his pulse.  It felt strangely good.  “Don’t do that again,” Sitwell ordered.  His voice was almost steady.

Clint appreciated Sitwell’s sentiment, nodded at him and tried on a smirk that felt two sizes too big for his still-cold lips.  “No promises.”

“Medical’s going to want to get their hands on you when we get back,” Sitwell observed.  “Apparently, you and Phil just generated a year’s worth of research material.”

Clint rolled his eyes and let himself list over onto the bench until his head rested against a pile of body armor and med kits.

“Whatever,” Clint said through a jaw-cracking yawn.  “Wake me when we get there.”

Just before he fell into the black chasm of sleep, Clint heard a voice calling his name, as if from across an empty hanger shrouded in twilight gloom.  The voice echoed, distorted by space and time, but Clint knew who it was, knew and answered without pause for thought.

“Phil,” he murmured, following the voice down into a familiar, warm embrace.


End file.
